The Ukrainian Republics

Huge changes were afoot in Ukraine in 1917, following the February and October Revolutions. In December 1917, the Ukrainian People’s Republic was controlled from Kiev by the Tsentral’na Rada, the Central Council, under Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi. The same month, Kharkiv, in north-east Ukraine, was occupied by the Red Army and declared the capital of a Bolshevik Ukrainian state. Ukraine was entering its first of four bloody years of fighting. The eventual Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic would retain Kharkiv as its capital until 1934.

Shown here is the original front cover of volume 1 of Dmytro Doroshenko’s history of Ukraine. Planned to cover the 1917-1923 period, the two published volumes focus chiefly on 1917 and 1918. Doroshenko was a member of the Central Council himself but eventually left; he later returned to power following the April 1918 coup led by Pavlo Skoropads’kyi. By the time his Ukrainian history was published, Doroshenko was in exile.